I have a keyboard for a reason. I never really understood why the game says "Get a gamepad, for your own safety" and whatever at the beginning, and shrugged it off as a joke - because I don't see why anyone would play with that thing.It's not worth my money if I already have a perfectly working keyboard, in my opinion.

I came into PC gaming after around 20 years of being almost exclusively a console player. As such, I'm one of those that very much feels more comfortable with a pad than keyboard controls in a lot of game types. Hell, it even took me some serious time to adjust to playing FPS games on keyboard, and that's a genre that is generally agreed to work much better with M&K controls.

Also, since I have consoles as well, I already had a pad that I didn't have to buy separately. For a while it was my PS3 controller via MotionInJoy and then I got a wired 360 pad for various reasons so that works as well, obviously.

Because some keyboards dont accept more than 2-3 key presses at once. If i hold run+left, pressing jump will not make Meat boy jump, and if i hold those 3 keys at once for 2-3 seconds, PC Speaker starts to beep, notifying that too much keys are pressed. On gamepad however, you can hold down every button with no problem. A lot of games require a lot of keypresses aat once. Also, it is called GAMEpad, designed specially for playing games. Keyboard is for text input, not for games.

Good points. I've been playing with a keyboard since 15 years ago, which is why I'm more comfortable with it than anything else. If someone else has been playing Gamepad for 15 years, obviously they'll be better with that. Also, the 3-key limitation is considerable as well.

I'm used to both and comfortable with both played this game with both and decided i prefer game pad for this, it is much better and you don't have random deaths to to keys not being as sensitive as an analog stick

I 100%'d up to Chapter 5 with a keyboard because I didn't have a controller. Once I got the controller (for Sonic Generations) and tried it with Super Meat Boy I found it to be much easier to control. I've played using the keyboard since Duke Nukem (not Duke Nukem 3D) and Commander Keen, so I was just as skeptical.

Turned out the message at the start was right, at least for me. As other people have said, it's down to personal preference. I'd say if you have a controller, give it a try and see how it feels and then choose which you prefer.

I definitely prefer to play on my Logitech gamepad, but I don't see how anyone could prefer the Xbox controller. The d-pad is mushy and gross (unless you have one of the new ones, maybe?) and the analog stick is objectively far less responsive than a keyboard or d-pad, especially since there's no analog movement in the game. But maybe it doesn't matter all that much. Thoughts?

Having played the game at a pretty high level (A+ everything) using both the d-pad and the analog stick on a PS3 controller and the analog stick on the 360 controller, it really seems like a matter of preference to me. I don't notice any significant difference in my play between any of those methods in any case. One nice thing about the 360 pad compared to PS3, at least, is that it has reasonable trigger shape for running (using X or square I found had a tendency to cramp my hands much more quickly).